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[-] Kieselguhr@hexbear.net 43 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Doesn't mean it's more than the fringe

I guess you didn't pay attention. Whenever they post pictures of Ukrainian soldiers there's a good chance that you will see a Totenkopf or a Black Sun badge. When western news interviews lesser known Ukrainian politicians, there's a good chance that you will see a Bandera portrait in the background.

The rise of the ukrainian far right has been well documented in western media before the invasion. Hell, google "Western media before February of 2022"

a sovereign democracy[Citation needed]

In fact it's neither sovereign, since the US couped Ukraine in 2014, nor it is a democracy, but an extremely corrupt oligarchic capitalist country. The contrast with Russia lies in the absence of a single pivotal leader like Putin, and they fully adhere to Western interests.

This doesn't make the invasion "good" as in "Aragorn is a good guy". The NATO encroaching makes it understandable. Which is completely different from "good". Understandable means that there is some kind of rationality at play. Which means it was probably preventable. Which means that some kind of solution is to be had. Hopefully...

spoiler"Then came Russia’s invasion. Within months, many of these same institutions had plunged into an Orwellian stampede to persuade the West that Ukraine’s neo-Nazi regiment was suddenly not a problem.

It wasn’t pretty. In 2018, The Guardian had published an article titled “Neo-Nazi Groups Recruit Britons to Fight in Ukraine,” in which the Azov Regiment was called “a notorious Ukrainian fascist militia.” Indeed, as late as November 2020, The Guardian was calling Azov a “neo-Nazi extremist movement.”

But by February 2023, The Guardian was assuring readers that Azov’s fighters “are now leading the defence of Mariupol, insisting they have shed their previous dubious politics and rapidly becoming Ukrainian heroes.” The campaign believed to have recruited British far-right activists was now a thing of the past.

The BBC had been among the first to warn of Azov, criticizing Kyiv in 2014 for ignoring a group that “sports three Nazi symbols on its insignia.” A 2018 report noted Azov’s “well-established links to the far right.”

Shortly after Putin’s invasion, though, the BBC began to assert that although “to Russia, they are neo-Nazis and their origins lie in a neo-Nazi group,” the Azov Regiment was being “falsely portrayed as Nazi” by Moscow." link

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this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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